


An Indulgence

by branwyn



Series: Person of Interest stories by branwyn [11]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alpha Harold Finch, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bear is a good service dog, Dubcon Cuddling, Fluff and Angst, Harold Whistler - Freeform, M/M, Omega Lionel Fusco, POV Harold Finch, Rain, Shelter, omegas in distress smell like they need a hug, safehouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:46:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25229302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwyn/pseuds/branwyn
Summary: Lionel smells like fear, and the city, and other people's hands.
Relationships: Harold Finch/Lionel Fusco
Series: Person of Interest stories by branwyn [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1641835
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	An Indulgence

When Harold walks into the safehouse, Bear is nowhere to be seen. Anxiety settles over him like a duvet. Nobody’s been here all morning; Bear should have been lying in wait to accost the first person back.

“Where did you go?” He’s tempted to crack a window, safehouse policy or no, it gets so stuffy in here at times. “Bear? _Hier_.” 

A familiar scrabble of blunt claws on a wood floor, and Bear is nosing at his hand, circling him. 

“What on earth has gotten into you?” Harold says in a tone of complaint. He bends at the waist to get nearer Bear’s eye level. “Goodness, John was supposed to give you a bath last weekend. You smell like a hussy. Yes, you _do_.”

Harold runs his fingers through Bear’s fur, soothing the dog, soothing his own mind. He’d been working in the subway for most of the evening, tending to the accounts that belonged to his most crucial aliases. The ones he used to think he couldn’t do without, Wren and Crane and Mallard and Robbins and so on. Betas, all; it was important no one look at them twice. All his alpha identities, like Partridge, have been discarded as too flashy. 

And of course, Professor Whistler is a beta. Harold doesn’t resent this in the least. John draws attention simply walking down the street, so there was no point in the Machine’s making Detective Riley anything but an alpha. Harold is fairly certain that the vast majority of Root’s rotating covers are omegas, for similar reasons. Neither of them ever really learned to blend in.

Harold misses being able to exchange glances with Sameen behind the backs of their much taller compatriots, a confederacy of the exasperated.

Tucked into the coat closet is an electric fan. Harold decides it will do, in place of opening a window. The fan trades spaces with a table lamp, and Harold sits on the couch to unpack his briefcase. 

He’d intended to stay the night here, but he really can’t tolerate this closeness in the atmosphere. Like fever, like palpable anxiety. 

It reminds him of...he’s not sure. Grace, maybe, or the loss of her. Loneliness this powerful usually doesn’t trouble him, except when thoughts of loss are fresh in his mind. 

But this isn’t merely loneliness. Harold tastes a bitterness like the early stages of panic, like the misery that comes with old familiar pain, and it’s like smelling bacon and pancakes from the other side of the house. Harold’s compelled to follow his nose.

When he tells Bear to seek, Bear doesn’t wait to be told who or what he’s supposed to look for. Harold follows after him, at a slightly less supernatural speed. They go down the hallway and up a set of dark, narrow stairs, into a room with no lights. Weak sunlight, filtering, through a tiny rose window throws watercolor light in every direction. 

On the floor, spangled in shards of reflected color like a frosted pastry dusted in sprinkles, sits Lionel Fusco. He’s got one hand on his knee and one arm around Bear’s neck, stroking down his side evenly, in time with his breathing. 

The detective is in his shirtsleeves, with a bloodstain at the elbow and a rip in his cuff. Harold doesn’t need to ask what happened. There are tell-tale clues everywhere, perceptible to Harold’s keen senses, even in the dim light.

(Lionel smells like fear, and the city, and other people’s _hands_.)

Had he always known that Lionel was an omega? He must have. No one who associates with their operation escapes Harold’s vetting procedures. But gender would have been the least of his concerns, given the baggage the detective carried with him. 

It was flawed reasoning. Harold sees that now. Lionel is one of the precious few friends Harold’s got; Lionel, caught out during a heat with no contingency in place for his safety in such an emergency, represents catastrophic system breakdown. 

He’s allowed himself to become distracted lately. Tomorrow, when his head is clearer, Harold will be quite furious with himself. 

“Detective?” He draws the word out, keeps his voice soft, but Lionel makes no sign of having heard him. “Are you all right?” he prods.

Lionel finally looks up, letting his head hit the wall behind him with an audible thunk. Then he turns away, running a hand over his face and mumbling something indistinct.

“What’s that?” Lionel needs to move his hand so Harold can understand him. He grips Lionel’s wrist, warm and solid against his palm, and tugs gently. “Say again, please.”

“I said I’m fine,” Lionel says between gritted teeth. “You don’t gotta baby me like—whoah, _hey_.”

Harold clambers awkwardly down onto one knee, a thing his body has not done for more than four years, and quietly, without fuss, yanks at Lionel’s arm in exactly the right way to make him fall against Harold’s chest, where Harold can begin soothing the _lonely_ out of his scent.

Lionel subsides, a dense, comfortable weight in Harold’s arms. After a moment, he makes another awkward, half-hearted noise of protest, which Harold simply ignores.

“You really don’t smell anything like a baby,” he tells Lionel after a moment.

“Oh yeah?” Lionel’s voice is slightly muffled for having his face pressed to the lapel of Harold’s jacket. “What do you know about it?”

“I know plenty.” There hadn’t been money for babysitters when Will was very small. Practically all Harold now remembers of 1982 is the endless pile of dirty diapers.

If he shares that information with Lionel, will he like Harold better? Trust him more? Already he’s squirming, like he wants to pull away. Or maybe he thinks Harold would rather be elsewhere. Perhaps he’s imagining that Harold is here out of some sense of duty, or outdated notion of alpha chivalry.

In point of fact, the chivalrous thing to do, regarding an omega whose heat has taken them by surprise away from home, is usually to leave them alone, to bring them anything they ask for, and see to it that no one else disturbs them. The problem with that course of action is that Lionel smells like the world might end if Harold lets him go. Whether that’s Lionel’s need speaking, or Harold’s own desire, he couldn’t possibly say. The distinction feels...unimportant, at the moment.

They are not ordinary people. Therefore, by definition, their circumstances can never be usual. All Harold can rely upon is his own best judgment, and his judgment tells him that Lionel belongs here, snug against Harold’s chest, with Bear curled up at his side and Harold’s hands running up and down his back. 

Instinct is a funny thing. If they were in any immediate physical danger, Lionel is far better suited than Harold to keeping them safe. But the imperative that Harold feels to _be_ Lionel’s protector, to make of his own body a cage that will keep him and a shield to defend him, can’t be reasoned away. 

Outside, weak sunlight gives way to a healthy downpour of rain. Harold listens as it strikes the glass, as Lionel breathes in his arms.

Eventually, Lionel stirs again. Harold, alert at the first sign of rebellion, tightens his grip. 

“You got a couple of couches around this place,” Lionel grumbles. “If we’re doing this, we should do it somewhere I don’t end up throwing my back out.”

He’s quite right. The safehouse is comfortably furnished, perfectly suited to passing a few sequestered days in peace and safety. John and Root can make do until then. A heat might last 36 hours, a little less. 

His means are straitened these days, but he can afford that much time, at least, for Lionel.

“In time,” Harold says, scraping his nails light against the vulnerable skin at the back of his neck. “Stay with me here just a little longer.

There is probably more of resignation than contentment in Lionel’s heavy, answering sigh, but that’s all right. Harold is simply grateful that Lionel is willing to indulge him. There are days ahead of them in which to return the favor.

*


End file.
